Political Capitol

Despite valiant efforts on the part of Sen. Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield and Rep. Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, legislative Republicans often struggle at the capitol to garner attention.

Not today. Although a controversial piece of legislation altering oversight of Catholic parish finances was tabled yesterday by the Democratic co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee, McKinney and Cafero insisted on going forward with a public hearing on the topic previously scheduled for today.

They argued busloads of Catholics were planning on attending and they should be allowed to make their voices heard even if the bill is not taken up this session.

McKinney and Cafero, along with several Republican colleagues and a couple Democrats, are sitting where the bi-partisan judiciary committee and its chairmen – Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven – would have been positioned had its hearing moved ahead. And the room is OVERFLOWING with people opposed to the bill, so it’s a VERY friendly audience and kind of a big exercise in self-affirmation.

“This is not an issue that ends today,” McKinney told the crowd during his opening remarks.

I suspect the GOP wants this moment to last for quite a long time, right up through election day, 2010.

UPDATE: Not just Catholics are testifying. For example, a Protestant just concluded her remarks.

The General Assembly’s Banks Committee, co-chaired by Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, today passed a bill intended to better regulate the state’s hedge fund industry, which calls Fairfield County and Greenwich in particular home.

“We’re going to shop it around to get some reactions to it and see what people think,” Duff said afterward.

The legislation still has to be voted on by the full General Assembly and signed by the Governor.

Hedge funds are private, largely unregulated pools of capital whose managers can buy or sell virtually any assets and participate substantially in profits from the money invested.

Lawmakers first attempted to get a handle on the industry in 2007 in response to some high profile collapses – Stamford-based Bayou Group LLC in 2005 and Greenwich-based Amaranth Advisors LLC in 2006. The fear was everyday consumers were increasingly exposed to the problems through pensions, endowments and charities.

The legislation never passed and the banks committee decided to focus on the subprime mortgage crisis in the 2008 session.

Opponents argue hedge fund regulation is best left to the federal government and Connecticut risks driving out the industry should it be the only state to adopt such laws.

Rep. John Stripp, R-Weston, the ranking Republican on the banks committee, said today he still prefers the federal government take the lead and hoped Connecticut’s actions might help encourage Congress to act.

“Failing that, this is a backstop,” Stripp said. “That’s the way I look at it.”

Stripp said the bill passed today “starts moving in the right direction of transparency for the investors, which I really think we have to have here. The age of ‘give us the money, we’ll go under a tent and invest it any way we want,’ they’re over.”

But while on the topic of the Catholic Church legislation, I’ve had some conversations with folks up at the capitol who cannot understand why this was handled so poorly by Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven.

These are intelligent guys who have faced off with the church before, particularly over civil unions and gay marriage. How did they NOT see this firestorm of protest coming? How did they NOT know it would be characterized by some as a personal attack on the church?

And why did they wait until AFTER the issue blew up over the weekend to try and address the criticism? They could have nipped this in the bud through a joint press release or even held a joint press conference with Catholic allies by their side announcing their intention to raise the bill.

But instead they just quietly put the proposal out there late last week and the Catholic bishops were able to go on the offensive over the weekend and gain enough leverage to force the pair to pull the proposal.

And I can say they “quietly” put it out from first hand experience. McDonald is not shy about giving me a heads up on legislation of interest to the Stamford/lower Fairfield County area. But there was nothing on this. Zilch.

It just seems like sloppy tactics for two seasoned legislators who, many have told me, should have known better.

UPDATE: McDonald said in an interview there was absolutely no attempt at subterfuge here and he just never saw this amount of opposition and outrage coming. He considered bringing up the bill for a public hearing – not an actual vote but a simple public hearing – as his duty as a legislator, noting it was an opportunity for the various sides to come out and share and explain their views with the judiciary committee.

“If you asked me was this in the top five of potentially emotional issues coming out of the block, I would have so ‘no’ a couple of weeks ago. This was not a front-and-center issue given the scope of what we’ve got,” McDonald said.

He also confirmed he has received death threats over the past few days that have been reported to Stamford and state police.

According to Derek Slap, spokesmen for the Senate Democrats, opponents of the Catholic Church legislation I refer to a few posts below swamped his office with phonecalls and e-mails over the past few days.

And then there were a couple of death threats as well. Ahhh, religion.

What I find interesting is that there appears to be an effort by opponents of the bill to discredit it as a bid by state government – in particular Democrats – to meddle in church affairs.

Reading some of the statements from Catholic Bishops, it seems they want people to think this is a ploy by, in the recent words of Oscar-winner Sean Penn accepting his award for “Milk”, “commie homo-loving sons of guns.”

The fact the two men who brought it forward – Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven – are gay and were at the forefront of the fight to legalize gay marriage in the state makes them easy targets for Catholic leaders.

And yet, regardless of how one feels about the merits of the bill or whether it tramples on the church’s First Amendment Rights, there are some PRETTY SERIOUS Catholics who convinced McDonald and Lawlor to raise the legislation for debate. These just aren’t folks who show up for Christmas Eve or Easter masses. Many have probably devoted far more time to their parish or the church in general than some of the critics of the bill.

Of course there are devout Catholics on the other side, such as House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, who made a point today of noting he is a faithful church-goer adamantly opposed to what McDonald and Lawlor are attempting to do.

My question to Cafero – is this about “who’s a better Catholic” – did not go over well during the GOP’s press conference condemning the legislation.

But the fact remains there are Catholics on both sides of this debate, and I think that’s something the bill’s opposition wants to gloss over because it’s easier to rally the faithful against big, bad state government than against their fellow churchgoers.

I’d bet that even as priests were reading aloud the message from Bishop Lori condemning the legislation this past weekend, some parishioners were sitting there rooting for the bill.

What will state government look like if lawmakers balance the two-year-budget and what they believe is an $8 billion budget deficit with no new tax increases?

According to the legislature’s Democratic majority: Two prisons, two University of Connecticut campuses, six technical colleges, one state university campus and two state parks will have to close; towns will lose their resident state troopers; over 58,000 state and private jobs will be lost; municipalities will lose all sorts of grants; physicians and nursing homes already unhappy with Medicaid rates will see them cut; private social services providers will see their state funds cut 5 percent, etc. etc. etc.

That was the data compiled over the past few weeks and presented to reporters yesterday in an exercise intended to convince a tax-wary public it is impossible to balance a two-year-budget and address the deficit through cuts alone. In fact, they argued, it will “devastate Connecticut.”

“It would actually lead us into a bigger economic slump,” House Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, said of his party’s “pretend” budget proposal.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s budget director, Robert Genuario of Norwalk, visited the capitol press room afterward to comment.

Asked what he made of the fake budget Genuario said: “The most important thing is the exercise is over … Now it’s important for us to move forward and try to work together to put a budget in place.”

Genuario said his office for now is still sticking with its own projection the deficit is closer to $6 billion. It was the difference between that number, which Rell used in crafting her no-tax-increase budget proposal from early February, and the $8 billion deficit estimated by the non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis, which caused Democrats to spend the past few weeks crafting the worst-case-scenario.

Genuario said he continues to believe the state can craft a budget without tax increases.

“The Governor has made it clear she thinks this is the wrong time to raise taxes,” he said.

Rell in a statement mocked the Democrats.

“They have been in session for ten weeks and what they have to show for it is a list of cuts they won’t make – but no list containing even one cut that they will make,” she said.

The Hartford Courant reports the Groton man accused of killing a Connecticut College student in a wrong-way accident on I-395 Saturday had “four or five drinks” that evening at Mohegan Sun.

This is probably going to make it impossible for proponents of a proposal to allow round-the-clock alcohol service at the casinos to pass this session.

Catholic Bishops are furious over a piece of proposed legislation that would turn over control of church finances to an elected board of laypersons.

In a statement read at masses Bishop William Lori of the Diocese of Bridgeport called the bill a “thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Catholic Church on the important issues of the day, such as same-sex marriage.”

I’m honestly missing the connection, unless Lori is making a thinly-veiled reference to the fact that the heads of the legislature’s judiciary committee, which is considering the bill, are both gay and vocal proponants of same sex marriage – Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven.

But it should be noted that last session it was a Republican – the since retired Rep. Dolly Powers, R-Greenwich – who tried to raise a similar bill on behalf of one of her constituents, Tom Gallagher.

I spoke to Gallagher last year about this topic. A graduate of Catholic University’s law school, he is a passionate believer in changing how Catholic churches are governed.

Powers’ proposal never went anywhere last year, probably because it was a short legislative session and was considered a fight best left for this year’s longer session.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s office has established a website – www.recovery.ct.gov – residents can use to monitor the progress of projects funded by federal stimulus money.

“This web site contains links to employers and training opportunities. It also includes critical information on project deadlines,” Rell added.

I think people will find this useful. Just a few hours ago I got a call from someone in the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency – Assistant Director Jack Burritt – seeking more details about how Rell’s office is distributing the money.

“This is timely,” he laughed when I called him back with the website address.